Arizona teen desperately seeking bone-marrow match

Syndi Lee chats with a friend while awaiting treatment at the Diamond Childrens Hospital at Banner University Medical Center

TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) -

A Payson teenager with an extremely rare immunodeficiency disorder getting treatment at Banner University Medical Center desperately needs help to find a bone marrow donor.

Sydni Lee has Familial Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis, or HLH, a life-threatening immunodeficiency that only 1 out of every 1.2 million people have. The hospital only sees a patient with her condition once every four years.

She is facing months of steroids and chemotherapy in Tucson, but a bone marrow transplant is the only cure.

Besides her own story, Lee hopes to use her diagnosis to encourage everyone to be a part of the bone marrow registry, which you can do here. This allows doctors to connect patients with matching donors.

"If they tell you you're a match that's a good thing, because that means you can save someones life," says Lee, who loves drama and hopes to get in to the field of linguistics. "Obviously I'm in it, but so are tons of people who need it too."

At any given time there are more than 7,500 people across the country in need of a bone marrow donor match.

For more information on how to join the bone marrow registry, click here.